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Ottawa-based visual artist Carol Wainio has exhibited her paintings widely since the 1980s, but it was her blog post taking on Globe columnist Margaret Wente that garnered her attention on social media last week.

John Baglow, a fellow Ottawa-based blogger, described Carol Wainio, above, as &ldquo;a very serious, professional person&rdquo; who believes the media should be &ldquo;held to account&rdquo; by &ldquo;citizen oversight.&rdquo;

By Joanna SmithOttawa Bureau

Tues., Sept. 25, 2012

OTTAWA—Carol Wainio uses a paintbrush to explore the dynamics between fact and fairy tale, some of her rich canvases featuring a dreamlike blend of time-honoured childhood characters and fleetingly fashionable footwear.

“I started the blog reluctantly, to document and record either factual errors or attribution problems — particularly ones which had a bearing on whether a story was factual or apocryphal, or which had a bearing on representation,” the 57-year-old wrote in an email after she reluctantly agreed to an interview with the Star on Tuesday.

“I was so surprised at the nature of some of those early errors — and the often negative response of some journalists and editors to my pointing them out — that I thought it warranted pursuing. I wanted to see how pervasive it was, whether there were more, and what the response would be,” Wainio wrote in the email.

Wainio has exhibited her artwork widely across Canada for the past three decades, but it was her most recent blog post — a detailed analysis of a 2009 piece by Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente, whose work she has poked holes in before — and its allegations of plagiarism that garnered her widespread attention in the world of social media last week.

“I think she’s doing a heck of a good job of providing it and I couldn’t believe some of the snotty things that were being said about her at the Globe,” Baglow said Tuesday regarding how the newspaper initially responded to the charges.

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“It was so off. She’s not obsessive. She’s not a crank, for crying out loud. She’s a legitimate, professional person with an interest in the media.”

Richard-Max Tremblay, a Montreal-based photographer who has known Wainio for about 20 years, recalled his friend being “appalled” when Sun News Network aired a notoriously aggressive interview of contemporary dancer Margie Gillis last year.

“(Wainio’s) got a strong stance regarding media and justice and fairness and honesty,” Tremblay said in a telephone interview on Tuesday. “She’s very concerned about these things.”

Wainio said her concern stems from her desire for the media to address the serious challenges facing this modern world.

“I think we’re facing some really difficult things and we need a strong media that’s willing to look at issues and at the real world, rather than at itself and its demographics and marketing,” Wainio, who grew up in Kitchener-Waterloo area of Ontario, wrote in her email.

“The ‘caring’ is perhaps more urgent because I have children and want them to live in a culture that fosters and respects serious public debate about the kinds of things they will be facing,” said Wainio.

“If I’ve learned anything, it’s that, sadly, in today’s sort of cynical environment, you pay a price for caring, and that despite all the space given over to comment boards at the bottom of an article, when it comes down to it, neither readers nor standards are respected as much as they should be.”

Wainio, an adjunct professor of visual arts at the University of Ottawa who is not teaching this session, is married to Paul Théberge, 59, who just finished being the Canada Research Chair in Music and Interdisciplinary Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

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